Pin Busters! D-I-Y Fabric Flowers

Upcycling, D-I-Y, crafts...I love all of these things. And when I can combine them all into one project it makes me smile. :-)

I've seen tons of D-I-Y flower pins on Pinterest. Some really cute, some not so much so. I liked the country charm of the ones by Brook over at Being Brook, so I decided that I would use her tutorial as a guide for my first attempt at making my own fabric flowers. Are they as easy to make as she claims?


Luckily, Lulu recently put several of her American Eagle t-shirts in the "get rid of" pile. I snagged those right away and hid them from Gus put them with my craft supplies. They're perfect for this project!


What I used:

• old t-shirts
• hot glue gun
• scissors
• felt
• marker/pen
• round object to trace circles (I used a large frosting tip)

Directions:
First, trace circles onto the felt and cut them out. These will be the base/back of the flowers, so they won't be seen at all (which means you could really use any color - or scraps).


Next, cut strips of fabric about 1/2" - 1" wide. The length will depend upon the size of your flowers. The cool thing about these flowers is that if your strip isn't long enough to finish the flower, you can just glue the ends down and start a new strip - it will blend right in. My felt circles were about 1 3/8" in diameter, and my fabric strips were about 15" long.


Now you put a dot of glue in the center of the felt circle, and press the end of the fabric strip into it. You can knot the fabric if you want a definite "center" to the flower. I used the seam of the t-shirt as my center.


Start twisting the fabric (how tight or loosely is up to you), and going in a clockwise direction, wrap it around the center. Use dots of glue on the felt to anchor the fabric in place.


When you have covered the felt, bring the strip to the back of the felt and anchor it with glue. Cut off any excess fabric.


Pretty cool!!


I decided to experiment with applying the fabric in different ways to get different looks.

For this one,  I just twisted the fabric loosely...


For this one, instead of applying the fabric in a circle, I applied it from the center to edge, back and forth, until the felt was covered...


And for this one, I knotted two colors of fabric together and twisted them as I applied the fabric in a circle...


The verdict: Absolutely Pin-worthy! They are so cute!! Super easy to make - and they cost next to nothing! The possibilities are endless, too!! You could apply them to clothing, purses, lamps, pillows, or even gifts. If you wanted to put them on something that gets washed in the washing machine, you could attach them with a snap, velcro, or a safety pin so they could be easily removed before washing. You could even add a barrette or ponytail holder!